3 Comments:

Thinking out loud on fielding ERV...I agree with the way you do it, but I wonder whether by the way we do it, we erroneously inflate the negative ERV of fielding.Here's what I mean.1 and less important) Human nature: It is our instinct I would think to notice the plays a fielder "should" have made than bestow credit for plays many players would not have.2) If ERV is an average identifier, I wonder whether the average fielding team should even out to zero ERV. I am 95%+ positive that under the system we have now, if you were to do ERV for all 30 teams, ALL 30 would have negative ERVs. I say this because a) the Nationals have a negative fielding ERV of 15.57 and negative fielding WV of 24.25 yet they are actually 12th best in the league for errors made per game; and b) while batting ERV assumes that when a person steps to the plate, he will get on a certain average amount of times and out a certain average amount of times (in basic terms), our fielding ERV assumes a perfect fielder--in fact, it assumes a fielder that has a BETTER than 1.000% fielding percentage (no errors, plus made the plays he should have that were not counted as errors--admittedly our system allows you to get back to even by making exceptional plays, but that is past my point).

Anyway, I'm glad we separate out batting, fielding and running because that gives us the best and most accurate view and allows us to differentiate. I just wonder whether over time we would need some constant that averages fielding ERV across the majors to get a better number for that specific stat.(This could go for running too, but I'll stick with fielding for now).

You're probably right on fielding RV. As I think I've said elsewhere, to get to a true 0=average fielder, you should give fielders credit, albeit small, for routine plays, dividing it between the pitcher and fielders (90/10 split for most plays, or maybe use the numbers from the studies that show fielding is some percentage of runs scored). This would allow fielders to accumulate positive RV over time to offset the negative errors. For the "three true outcomes" the pitcher gets 100%.

I can't do that right now, because my spreadsheet won't let me split RV between players for a single play without a lot of hassle.

I don't think it is worth splitting credit. I just think that as ERV matures, we could probably come up with some constant over time, that compares fielding ERV over the league. And if X position has an average ERV of negative 3.21 or something over 162 games, then you would just divide/credit/tweak a player at that position's ERV by some pro rata based on games played by 3.21--something real cool and moderately complicated like converting celsius to fahrenheit.